On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Nick Hodulik wrote: > I HAVE had this problem when delivering > into mbox format-- at more than 50MB it just doesn't work.
This is the first that I have ever heard about such a problem. Note that the traditional UNIX format append procedure also needs to write to a tmpfile(). This is because the traditional UNIX format has a 5 minute timeout on the write-lock. If multiple messages are being appended in the same operation, the entire sequence can take more than 5 minutes, causing the lock to be lost. By collecting the entire multi-message append first, the traditional UNIX format append procedure can minimize the period that it has the lock. Thus, when going through dmail you need 150MB of free disk space to deliver a 50MB message to a traditional UNIX format mailbox. I will leave aside the fundamental issue that it is insane to use traditional UNIX format mailboxes for 50MB messages. > Speaking of which, I have always wondered why mbx isn't the default format > for mail delivery "out of the tarball" and instead have mbox need to be > manually switched on instead of vice versa. For better or worse, traditional UNIX format is the default format for mailboxes on UNIX. This is not something that I have the authority to change. The design of UW imapd is that it works out-of-the-box in a traditional UNIX environment without requiring any changes. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
